a brief bio of Jack on his
Mediation
Resources site where it mentions his study of Tai Chi which he
doesn't mention in the interview.

Interviewed by DC about 9-15-11

[Suzuki Roshi
had] a great feeling of
compassion and at the same time, utter detachment.

D – So here we are.

J - (Laughing) So
what’s on your mind?

D - I just wanted to
hear anything you had to say about Suzuki Roshi, your memories of that and
ZenCenter back then.

J – Well, I
connected with Dick Baker when I was a senior at Berkeley – in 1962 He
introduced me – took me to see Suzuki Roshi. At any rate, I would go over
on the weekends and sit with Suzuki Roshi It was an unusual experience for
me because I’d had no experience whatsoever in meditation or Zen, though
I’d read some books on it at college. The first impression I had was this
very detached, calm, older Japanese man – and I was a little bit in awe of
that

I had done
consulting for Japanese banks on their investments. That was my new job
out of college. And I was just getting acquainted with the Japanese
financial community and he was quite a counterpoint to that to say the
least. And I found him a more connected, calmer Dalai Lama, an interesting
way to put it I guess. They both had similar spiritual auras or senses.
But there’s a connection I had with Suzuki Roshi that I never had with the
Dalai Lama. Something just happened. And he would greet students
individually after a sitting.

I don’t think you
were there quite that time were you?

D – What year are
you talking about?

J – I’m talking
about early ‘62.

D – No. I came in
‘66.

J – OK.

D – You said that
the Dalai Lama and Suzuki Roshi both had what?

J – The awakened
spiritual presence and calmness. But there’s a different flavor. It’s like
Thich Nat Hahn. I can’t really deeply relate to Thich Nat Hahn. I had the
same problem around the Dalai Lama. Whereas with Suzuki Roshi, there was a
different form of compassion. More of a personal kindness. I don’t know
how to say it better than that. Because it felt very personal, very kind,
and very soft.

So I would appear on
and off during those early years at the Soto temple, and somewhere just
after Tassajara was purchased – cause I’d been working on a side project
with Dick Baker since ’62

D – What was that?

J – It was an idea
of a scientific magazine, keeping people up to date on stuff. I forget the
name but there were four of us involved. It never really got off the
ground and published.

But Baker and I got
closer and that’s when he was suggesting that I come and check out Suzuki
Roshi and the scene. So I would often sit in the auditorium at Sokoji by
myself and then have a two minute conversation – it wasn’t really a
dokusan – or maybe it was a dokusan. Just a very short conversation with
him. He checked everyone out one by one. Just said goodbye and a few
comments.

Then I’m trying to
remember whether it was Baker or John Steiner who suggested I go down to
Tassajara and spend a week. Now this – oh before that – probably 64 or so
- When all the financial stuff was going on, the community needed help in
obtaining a bank loan in order to perfect being able to take control of
and develop Tassajara.

D – That’s not 64.
That has to be 66 at the earliest.

J – It could have
been, because I went down in 66.

D – We didn’t buy it
till the end of 66 – a few days before 67.

J – Well I was down
there in 66 and in 67, but anyway, the piece that I remember is Baker
Roshi and Suzuki Roshi coming to the bank to see me in full regalia, and
the natives were a little bit rattled by all this – to see Suzuki Roshi
come in in robes and it caused quite a stir to say the least.

D – And Baker in
robes too?

J – Yeah.

DC note: Richard
Baker received his first robes the day he was ordained as a priest, July
4, 1967 at the beginning of the first practice period. Either Jack’s
memory is putting the robes on Baker now, or they went for a loan after
the first two payments had been made. There were ongoing expenses and
start up costs as well as the payments.

J - Now, what they
wanted to talk to me about was getting financing, and because by then I
had become the senior consultant to Bank of Tokyo and Sumitomo Bank and
other banks in California. By that time I was one of the three or four
largest money managers on the West Coast. At any rate, we had a short
discussion and I referred them to the senior officer, I forget his exact
title, but he was the number two man at the Bank of Tokyo and also
responsible for loans. So I sent them over there and heard that they had
gotten the financing. So somewhere after that it was suggested, probably
by Baker Roshi that I go down to Tassajara and spend some time. And this
is the time when everyone was clearing the creek, getting stones for the
septic system, and so on and so forth.

So, one of the most
interesting things that happened to me is that I was told to show up at
the Soto temple and that I would be driven down to Tassajara. And you
know, bring some clothes etc for a week. And I was – do you know Phillip?

D – Sure. Phillip
Wilson.

J – Yeah. Anyway, he
was there driving an old tear-shaped Volvo. And I said are other people
going down with me and he said just one and I said oh who are we waiting
for and he said Suzuki Roshi.

DC note: Phillip
would have said Reverend Suzuki or Suzuki Sensei.

J - So this is
rather humorous. I was on the right hand back seat of the car and Suzuki
Roshi got in on the left hand side. He looked at me, bowed, I bowed to him
and not a word was spoken on the entire trip to Tassajara. Complete and
utter silence. Anyway, I found this a bit unusual. And I’m sure my mind
had many thoughts and I sometimes wish I had recordings of my own thoughts
– because it was a ve3ry powerful experience. It felt extremely connected
and personal. And – these days I don’t talk so much because my voice is
bad, but I’ve always been a real talker. And to actually sit with him for
four hours was an amazing experience. Just trying to give you the flavor
of it. It was very very connected, very personal – a great feeling of
compassion and at the same time, utter detachment. I mean he was just
there – in the Suzuki Roshi way. And I was doing my best to emulate that –
when I wasn’t monkey-minding around. And I felt no urge to say anything
and he obviously had his own purposes for not saying anything to me. And
I’ve never been able to figure that out. It was – you know – one of those
life experiences. We get down to Tassajara, get to the gate, drive on in.
He gets out of the car, bows to me, I bow to him, and he walks off.

So that was the
trip. The real trip was yet to come. It was late afternoon or evening –
and someone said we’re going to get you fitted up with a robe – and da da
da da da get fitted with an oryoki and all this stuff. And I’m just going
along with the program now. They said get up next morning and eat and then
after that he [Phillip] said come with me and I said where are we going
and he said you’re going to sit tangaryo and I said what the hell is that?
And he took me to one of the pine rooms and he said, you’re going to sit
here all day. I said you’ve got to be out of your mind. I said, I didn’t
come down here to sit all day. And he said well that’s what you’ve got to
do. And I said when is there a bus back or when is someone going back out?
Cause I can’t see sitting here for a day. And he said no one’s going out
so this is what you have to do. It’s what Suzuki Roshi wants you to do.
And I said, oh my god.

[In tangaryo] I
proceed to do a review of my life from day one. I had a very funny – I’m
sure many other Zen students have had that experience – of just reviewing
my life. And somewhere in the afternoon I got to my college days which
were only a couple of years back – and I just got completely bored. And I
said stop. And I still had thoughts as I recall, but I wasn’t following a
discursive path. And it was physically like anything else for someone
who’d never sat except the few times at the Soto temple. I was
uncomfortable. But for some reason I just decided to do it. So when this
was all over – ah, now I remember. When that was all over – now we need to
get you a robe and an oryoki – because you’re going to sit with the rest
of the students in the zendo and I said, well, what does that mean? And he
described it.

And the next
morning, Suzuki Roshi introduced me to the temple. He didn’t do anything –
it was more informal – but it was like an introduction to the community
and he was accepting me as a monk. I haven’t talked about this very much
over the years, but it was a pretty weird experience to come in off the
ground – and I know this has happened billions of times across the world –
but to come in on ground zero, get a robe on you, be taught to use the
oryoki and then marched into the zendo as a monk – now everyone knew I was
only there for a week. I was a commercial banker. I was going back to do
that thing which I did. That was pretty powerful. And then of course when
it came time for work – I remember that John Steiner and maybe one or two
others were assigned to Suzuki Roshi – to go pick up stones out of the
creek for the septic system. I remember several days working silently with
Suzuki Roshi picking up stones. And it was a very sweet experience. That’s
how I got to know John Steiner. We were rock pickers together.

Anyway, it’s not
that my memory is bad because of age, it’s that I haven’t remembered these
details for years. Life went on. I was a monk for a week, and then I went
back to San Francisco. I was told once again by Phillip to meet him at
some damned obnoxious hour like four thirty
or five o’clock – well before
sunrise. And I said okay. Is anybody going back with us? And he said, just
Suzuki Roshi. [laughing]. So here I am again in the back seat of this
little Volvo . Suzuki Roshi climbs in, bows at me, I bow at him, And he
starts talking. And we never stopped talking, just like I’m talking now,
for the four hour ride back to San Francisco. Now I’d never heard of him
doing that before. It seems very unusual to me – particularly to the
counterpoint of silence on the ride coming down. If I had that
conversation on tape, it would be worth gold – because he just opened up
on everything. And the only thing I particularly remember was Richard
Baker. There was a long conversation in depth about Baker and what he was
doing and what he was going to do and ta da ta da ta da. And I was quite
surprised to hear this conversation and to participate in it and he’d ask
me what my opinion was of this or that. And it was a dialogue that I’ve
wished forever that I had on tape – because it was pretty wide ranging.
And that’s why I told people around the troubles at Zen
Center that Suzuki Roshi really knew what he was doing, he knew what he
was taking on. A lot of people had the opinion that Baker hoodwinked
Suzuki Roshi or got away with murder or did lots of stuff that Suzuki
Roshi didn’t know about etc etc etc – and that definitely was not my
conversation with Suzuki Roshi. It wasn’t like, this is the perfect human
being. But he chose, and I think he chose well to have someone who could
build ZenCenter and make it stable and
sustainable.

So I was really
influenced by that. I went back to my banking. I’d show up occasionally at
ZenCenter – that building had been
purchased. And I went back to Tassajara for a weekend or two. In ‘67 I got
married again and at my wedding Richard Baker and Suzuki Roshi were there
and I had dim sum and nigiri sushi in the food for the wedding – which all
my Western friends thought was hilarious. And I don’t remember when the
discussion took place but there was an invitation to take my oryoki and my
robe and go back to Tassajara, jump back in – and that’s what I did. But
my conversations with Suzuki Roshi that week were limited.. I wasn’t
training with him but I still had the same feeling of connection and it
was wonderful. He was realized and compassionate. In a different way than
the Dalai Lama and Thich Nat Hahn who had similar auras – their
personalities show up. The Dalai Lama is more open, friendly, political,
all that kind of stuff. Their basic natures were similar and yet I had no
attraction to them like I did to Suzuki Roshi.

So I don’t remember
when I saw him last before he died. It must have been when Baker Roshi was
installed. I’m sure I was there for that because I remember bringing Baker
Roshi a present. So I didn’t have any direct interaction with Suzuki Roshi
at that though I could see him and see his frailness and his illness But
other than that he was unchanged to my eyes and to my feeling. So what I
observed, and this was only occasionally when he got ill, was that the
illness didn’t change him, didn’t change his energy. I don’t know how else
to say it. I still felt connected to him. I still felt he was the same. He
was just a suffering buddha rather than a happy buddha.

I’m trying to think
if there’s anything else – cause my observations of him were set the first
time I met him – when I saw who he was and what he was. It’s very evident
to me.. And of course those two trips – the silent one down and the
chatterbox one back were – rather unusual to me. And I haven’t talked
about that except to a few people. I’m sure it’s something you haven’t
heard. It’s not like I was part of the inner circle. I was always
connected to Richard Baker. And John Steiner became a close personal
friend. And when I went back to Tassajara as a full time monk in ‘77, that
was due to Steiner and my conversation that he encouraged me to ask Baker
Roshi if I could go to Tassajara. And that was terribly unusual because in
those days you had to have been practicing for two years – there were some
real requirements – and I just violated them all. That was between Baker
Roshi and myself. But that’s not what you’re asking me about.

D – No, I’m happy to
hear anything you have to say.

J – That’s a
continuation of the connection of Baker Roshi to Suzuki Roshi and I was
able to transition from a friend to a student because I could connect very
deeply with Richard Baker.

[Jack’s been ill and
his voice is getting weaker]

And I had just been
going through a divorce and Baker Roshi invited me to Tassajara for the
weekend, and John Steiner was already down there and he and I were
standing outside the gate and he said, ask him if you can go and I went wa
wa wa wa wa wa wa – I’m 235 pounds, a soft banker – I hadn’t been
meditating and so on and so forth and other students might remember –
there was actually a book on how long I would last. Nobody thought I’d
make it through seven days of tangaryo, least of all me. I mean – I
thought I was going to die multiple times. It was the experience of my
life. But I’m so goddamn stubborn, I’m not going to give up. So I toughed
it out and barely made it through tangaryo by the skin of my teeth. But
made lifelong friends in that process. I knew John Steiner but did not
know John Bernie or Dave Flegel (sp?) and they were in tangaryo. Half of
the new group sat against one wall and half sat against the other. And I
looked over there and checked people out energetically and I’d go
[humming] whoa – I’ve got to check out that person – they’re going to be
important and [humming] whoa! What do we have here (looking at someone
else). And I identified Bernie and Flegel as life long friends just by
looking at them across the zendo.

D – You mentioned
the Dalai Lama and Thich Nat Hahn. Did you have some experience with them?

J – You know - I was
the original project manager of Spirit Rock and hired all the people,
supervised the early construction, all the roads and infrastructure, the
first series of buildings were all my doing. I took it to the board of
supervisors and the planning commission, did all that. I don’t know if you
know that stuff.

D – Oh. No I didn’t.

J – I had started
sitting once a week with Jack Kornfield at the urging of John Bernie. John
and I had a life long association. He would take me to all of his
spiritual finds like John Kline and Robert Adams, - I went to Sedona to
spend some time with Robert Adams etc and we’d have these experiences. And
I figured it was only just that I was the one who introduced him to
Adyashanti. And because of Spirit Rock I got to organize speakers. I was
the major domo I guess. I heard Thich Nat Hahn talk but I could not make a
connection with him. I could recognize him as a very spiritual man but I
just couldn’t get there. I had the same experience with the Dalai Lama
because some years ago he came to Spirit Rock and met with all the board
members and teachers and yada yada yada. I’d met him earlier in the late
sixties with John Steiner. He just didn’t click with me. There are certain
teachers who I can go deep with and click and others who I can recognize
who they are I’m not going to meet their kind of spiritual penetration.

D – How about
Adyashanti?

J – Oh, absolute
depth and immediacy. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve described him as the leader of the
third school, sort of in the third generation of Buddhist teachers. And he
learned from American Buddhists. And he had the fortune to be raised by
good parents, loving parents and he did his thing you know – bicycle
racing, whatever. When I met him he had just started teaching in Berkeley.
One of my ex lovers had taken me to that. The first time I met him there
was an instant connection, a dissolving, So it’s been that way with him
and no accident that he and Bernie – and John’s always been an extremely
close friend of mine and I relate to him as I related to Suzuki Roshi or
Adyashanti. I’ve sat and dissolved with him and gone to some pretty deep
spiritual places.

So this is the
genesis of it. It was a combination of Suzuki Roshi and Richard Baker that
got me - very different people, but very much of one mind. Dick’s
something. He’s a very complicated case.

D – I was just in
touch with him.

J - I haven’t seen
him since a year ago at that thing underneath the Golden Gate.

D – I was there.
Paul Rosenblum and I were his assistants. I did absolutely nothing. It
just got me in free.

J – [Laughing] That
first connection was the big connection. And of course when Richard Baker
got into all those troubles I became nobody’s friend. Because he had his
own apologies for it and I said, you just don’t understand. Yeah they’re
adults, yeah they’re free to choose, yeah you have an arrangement with
your wife – that doesn’t cut it. And I’d also say to people at Zen Center,
for Christ’s sake, you can’t just throw a roshi into the street like that.
If he misbehaves, you retrain him.

D – I don’t think it
was students. I think it was student – Lucy. Uncool but not the crowd he’s
accused of. Anna was part of his ivory tower.

J - His explanation
was that these were worldly women and I believe he was genuinely in love
with Anna.

D – He wasn’t thrown
out. He quite. But many people were angry and very conciliatory.

J – Not in the
least.

D – But like you
say, he didn’t make it any easier.

J – And you notice
that when Norm Fischer did that reconciliation, that Paul Rosenblum sat on
one side [of Baker] and I sat on the other. And by the end of it I was
sitting next to Steve Weintraub.

D – He was the
angriest.

J – Yes. So I sat
next to Steve. In essence what I did throughout the whole thing, being a
mediator, that was my way of mediating it. Showing my support for Richard
Baker and showing my support for Steve Weintraub. People didn’t notice
that I’m sure but I made an unannounced effort to show that I really was
impartial. And I am impartial. Richard Baker did things he shouldn’t have
done and the community did things they shouldn’t have done – but they did.
It is what it is. It’s sad because it’s had a huge effect. And I’ve always
appreciated Norm’s ability to put that thing together.

D – There are other
things that have happened. Like Lew Richmond instigated the disciples
meetings and those went quite well with Richard and most others who were
ordained by Suzuki who were alive. Everyone but Grahame and Silas and
Angie came at first. Some who weren’t disciples came like Yvonne, Steve
Weintraub, Jane Schneider, Della, Betty, Katherine Thanas. Then a smaller
group continued meeting. We had about five or so meetings. Dick came to
all of them and they went very well. Initially there was some grumbling
but they were overall quite harmonious. Lew started it but Peter Schneider
kept it all together.

J – You’ve never
interviewed me because I was not an integral part of, never part of the
upper levels of discussions of all kinds of stuff.

D – Well, I have no
criteria like that. I interview anybody who met Suzuki Roshi.

J – I understand.
It’s just that my connections to Suzuki Roshi and ZenCenter are extremely personal and
at a distance.

D – I’m very happy
to have your memories and there are many other people I’d like to get to
but it’s a matter of resources and time and everything. So what else?

J – I’ve mentioned
the important groups I’ve been involved with. Obviously the big one
outside of the ZenCenter was Spirit Rock. I spent about
four years on that and when I got final approval from the board on what I
had crafted I told Jack Kornfield I’d done my thing. And as usual I’d
stomped on a lot of toes. That’s my style. I can’t stand it when people
don’t understand things. That’s my style. It’s a weakness. Not enough
compassion. There were times when I was the only one on the board who
wanted something. Jack Kornfield agreed with me. At times he was the only
one who agreed with me. We went through the public hearing without one
single dissenting voice from the audience. And with 400 acres – a negative
declaration, never an EIR. That was sort of a capstone and I’ve been a
mediator ever since though I’ve dabbled in a few other things.

D – And you didn’t
continue banking?

J – [No] After eight
years or so I became assistant to the president of Crocker which became
Well’s Fargo.

D – What year were
you born?

J – ’38. In
RochesterNew York.

D – How about a
quick summary of what happened then?

J – I spent the
first year and a half with loving parents. My father died. My mother lost
it. So I was in foster homes till I was about seven and in an orphanage
till I was about thirteen.

D – How was the
orphanage?

J – A snake pit. For
example, the girls were stripped naked and beaten with rubber hoses. It
was the Hillside Children’s Center. There was a bully and if a boy
misbehaved, you were put in a boxing ring and knocked senseless. And
another punishment was a belt over bare back and buttocks.

D – Was it run by a
religion?

J – No, it was run I
believe by the county. It was a snake pit. When I graduated at seventeen,
half the children I’d lived with since thirteen were already in jail.

D – What happened
after you were thirteen.

J – My mother who
had remarried, took me out of the orphanage to live with a cruel
stepfather, a neurotic ex NFL football player.

D – What was his
name?

J – Joe [can’t
understand last name]. So that was a traumatic few years. One night when
they were really into arguing he was really berating my mother in the
living room and I got out of bed and loaded my carbine with seven hollow
points and waited and thought if he lays a hand on her he’s going to get a
body full of lead.

D – Did you warn
him?

J – Nah. I kept the
gun in the bed with me and when I heard he was asleep I left the house and
that was the end of that. My mother got an apartment and my last two years
of high school I was fairly close to the school.

D – And you went to
college.

J – That’s the fun
part. I had the most prestigious scholarship in the United States.
National competition. There were five of us at Cornell and we lived in the
scholarship house complete with liveried waiters, linen, all nice stuff,
our own wine cellar, And we entertained everyone who came to the campus. I
got Martin Luther King drunk at four in the morning. I have a lot of
stories. I stayed there a year but I had very bad health. Before I was the
third or fourth leading encyclopedia salesman on the East Coast. So I had
my own crew and was driving all over New York state selling encyclopedias
– before college. But I was also sick and I had to give up after a couple
of months because I couldn’t breathe. It was asthma, very bad asthma. But
I finally figured it out. I couldn’t take the East Coast. So I applied to
Stanford and was accepted and when I hit California that was the end of
asthma. That was ’57. I dropped out of college for a year – sold
encyclopedias, pots and pans, worked for a gas station and re-entered at
Berkeley.
I graduated Phi Beta Kappa with my own major. I was allowed to take any
upper level graduate course I wanted.

D – Didn’t you have
a general area of study?

J – No. There were
13 of us who were chosen as guinea pigs for UC Santa Cruz and we were
given free reign on the campus, Berkeley campus. They were studying how to
organize Santa Cruz and used us as sort of a test thing. It was called a
humanities field major. We could take anything.

D – What happened
after you graduated?

J – Before I
graduated I convinced my professors to give me tutorials and I went to
work for Crocker. I had the biggest scholarship at Berkeley for graduate
work and the bank paid me more than a Harvard MBA. The bank gave me any
courses I wanted. That was a very very very fast pass. Within three or
four years I was one of the largest money managers on the West Coast.

D – Did you continue
to go to classes?

J – No, I’d just
crib texts (tests?). Like the first job I had as assistant to the bank was
to make a budget. The bank had never had a budget. They had great bean
counters who knew where all the beans were, but nobody had ever attempted
to budget or control it. I made a few enemies because I uncovered all the
slush funds, overdone areas, deadwood. I did a thing that had only been
done at Chase Manhattan called liability management.

D – How are you
doing financially right now?

J – Terrible.

D – How come?

J – [Laughing] I got
caught in the downdraft of 2008. I was right but my timing was off. Too
many eggs in one basket. At the same time I was getting ill and my
business was failing because of the circumstances, nothing I could
control. Every Joe turned into a mediator, every lawyer turned into a
mediator. I used to be one of the leading mediators and trained mediators
in the nineties. I trained judges at mediation.

D – So when did you
become a mediator?

J – Back to the
timeline. I left the bank in ‘72 and went into vineyards and art projects.
I went to Tassajara in ‘77 and was there and the City Center through ‘81.
Then from ’81 through ’86 I did my own business deals – venture capital
etc. And then in ’86 I started doing Spirit Rock. In ’89, ’90, I started
doing mediation. A woman I knew who was one of the leaders in the field I
ran into at a party and she said, you’re better than anyone I know already
and you haven’t done a thing. So I did training with her for a year and we
started doing cases and here I am. I haven’t found anything else that
excites the hell out of me. Every time I do a mediation I go into states
with people but if I told them that they’d run like hell. By the time I’ve
finished, the magic has been done.

D – And right now
you’re pretty ill, right?

J – I’ve got
congestive heart failure and peripheral arterial disease and multiple
blood clots in my lungs and some cancer. Other than that, I’m healthy as a
horse.

D – What type of
cancer?

J – Skin cancer,
fortunately.

D – But you’re not
dying.

J – The doctors say
I could die any day.

D – You could also
get better.

J – I’ve been trying
for years. It’s a little hard to do business when I sound like this.
[raspy voice]

D – You sound
alright now.

J – [laughing] It’s
early in the morning. It’ll get weaker all day. And then I’ll take a nap
in the afternoon and it will be normal again.

D – But you had bad
cancer fourteen years ago, right?

J – I should be
dead. I had a lymphoma wrapped around my heart and lungs the size of a
small football. I was pronounced with less than a day to live three
separate times. The oncologist came in and said we’re going to take you to
the operating room and I said explain to me what you’re gonna do and he
said they were going to go in through my throat and I said do it here,
that I’m so weak you’re not going to put me under. Then after that he said
I had to go to the operating room because they couldn’t do enough and I
said, dig a bigger hole. [laughing] So they did it and gave me a cocktail
and it was working and the cancer started receding, spent another couple
of weeks in a private room and walked out the door.

D – Alright.

J – Nobody thought
I’d ever do that.

D – Where are you
living now?

J – I’ve been living
for the last fourteen years in a condo across from the Civic Center in
Marin County.

DC note – Jack and I
chatted some more. I said I’d try to come visit him, and we said goodbye.